Across the Bridge - Mavis Gallant [42]
“We don’t know what Mme. Pons did.”
“I could mind children, take them for walks in the afternoon.”
My double file of charges, hand in hand, stopped at the curb. A policeman held up traffic. We crossed and entered the court of an ancient abbey, now a museum. The children clambered over fragments of statues and broken columns. I showed them medieval angels.
Mme. Pons did not want a strange daughter-in-law from a provincial city, my mother said. She wanted me, as before.
For the first time I understood about the compact of mothers and the conspiracy that never ends. They stand together like trees, shadowing and protecting, shutting out the view if it happens to suit them, letting in just so much light. She started to remove the tray, though I hadn’t touched a thing.
“Get up, Sylvie,” she said. It would have seemed like an order except for the tone. Her coaxing, teasing manner had come back. I was still wondering about the pale-blue dress: was she pretending it was spring, trying to pick up whatever had been dropped in April? “It’s time you had your hair cut. Sometimes you look eighteen. It may be part of your trouble. We can lunch at the Trois Quartiers and buy you some clothes. We’re lucky to have Papa. He never grumbles about spending.”
My mother had never had her own bank account or signed a check. As a married woman she would have needed Papa’s consent, and he preferred to hand over wads of cash, on demand. Melle Coutard got the envelopes ready and jotted the amounts in a ledger. Owing to a system invented by M. Pons, the money was deducted from Papa’s income tax.
“And then,” said Maman, “you can go to the mountains for two weeks.” It was no surprise: Chantal and her lieutenant wanted to return to Chamonix on a lovers’ pilgrimage, but General Nauzan, Chantal’s father, would not hear of it unless I went, too. It was part of my mission to sleep in her room: the Nauzans would not have to rush the wedding or have a large and healthy baby appear seven months after the ceremony, to be passed off as premature. So I would not feel like an odd number – in the daytime, that is – the lieutenant would bring along his brother, a junior tennis champion, aged fifteen.
(We were well into our first week at Chamonix before Chantal began to disappear in the afternoon, leaving me to take a tennis lesson from the champion. I think I have a recollection of her telling me, late at night, in the darkness of our shared room, “To tell you the truth, I could do without all that side of it. Do you want to go with him tomorrow, instead of me? He thinks you’re very nice.” But that kind of remembering is like trying to read a book with some of the pages torn out. Things are said at intervals and nothing connects.)
I got up and dressed, as my mother wanted, and we took the bus to her hairdresser’s. She called herself Ingrid. Pasted to the big wall mirror were about a dozen photographs cut from Paris Match of Ingrid Bergman and her little boy. I put on a pink smock that covered my clothes and Ingrid cut my long hair. My mother saved a few locks, one for Papa, the others in case I ever wanted to see what I had once been like, later on. The two women decided I would look silly with curls on my forehead, so Ingrid combed the new style sleek.
What Chantal had said was true: I looked entirely different. I seemed poised, sharp, rather daunting. Ingrid held a looking glass up so I could see the back of my head and my profile. I turned my head slowly. I had a slim neck and perfect ears and my mother’s forehead. For a second a thought flared, and then it died: with her blue frock and blue floral hat and numerous trinkets Maman was like a little girl dressed up. I stared and stared, and the women smiled at each other. I saw their eyes meet in the mirror. They thought they were watching emerging pride, the kind that could make me strong. Even vanity would have pleased them; any awakening would do.
I felt nothing but the desire for a life to match my changed appearance. It was a longing more passionate